


Emptiness and Light

by Fendork



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Mollymauk - Freeform, Mollymauk backstory, This episode made me an emotional wreck and you know I had to write angst about it, amnesiac!Mollymauk, backstory stuff because our immortal lord Taliesin Jaffe has blessed us with canon backstory info, casual warning for amnesia and mental instability, nonverbal!mollymauk, spoilers for episode 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 16:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14313180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fendork/pseuds/Fendork
Summary: At first there was darkness, and only that.And he awoke to nothing, yet everything at the same time.He was born empty, until he grew to find his family.





	Emptiness and Light

**Author's Note:**

> I'm normally not one for writing fanfiction as I normally try to stick to original stuff but I really wanted to write something about Molly because of episode14 and how much JUICY backstory was revealed. I started writing this a few weeks ago but changed a lot of it to be canon to what we know so far (mainly Molly waking up buried underground because goddamn that's such a Taliesin thing to come up with - what a great nerdy goth who loves to murder all of our emotions.) 
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy!
> 
> (I haven't thoroughly checked for grammar and spelling errors, so I apologize if there happens to be any!)

There was darkness, and only that.

And he awoke to nothing, yet everything at the same time.

He couldn’t breathe, his chest heaving desperately as he inhaled the dirt that surrounded all around him, making him cough and splutter before breathing in even more in a state of chaotic panic. He clawed at the darkness in front of him, howling and screaming through terrified silenced pleads that called out to no one. 

And from nothing, there was light. A bright burning light that was somehow as peaceful and mesmerizing as it was terrifying. He reached out towards the unknown, begging the light to consume him and take him away from the darkness that tried to drown out his mind. The light accepted, tearing him away from the darkness as he clawed out from its dreaded grasp into the world that was bright and wondrous.

He gasped through a scratchy throat that was burning and dry, breathing in the fresh air it gave to him as he staggered up and away from the world below he had been rescued from. The light was blinding and painful, clouding his mind as he felt himself collapse onto the forest floor beneath his feet. He sat shaking uncontrollably as the cold wind rushed against his body and rattled into his bones that ached with a throbbing numbness.

Empty.

He felt nothing, his head pounding and hands trembling he could hear nothing but the screaming of his own endless thoughts that chilled through him into an incoherent mess of words and noises he couldn’t even begin to understand. The world around him was loud and bright, squinting as he stumbled through the madness around him with no purpose other then the instinct to escape - to run.

So, he runs. Stumbling and tripping over his own feet he sprints away from nothing other then himself, icy wind rushing past his ears as he looks about the world around him in confusion. Not of it is familiar, none of it makes any sense. He runs till he can no longer feel his legs, till the pounding in his chest seizes all control. And he falls, and it all goes bright.

And he feels nothing.  
Empty.

He awakes again with the smell of salt filling into his lungs, the sound of the sea lapping in the distance. The world too bright and far too loud. Birds fly over head; white and black with magnificent yellow and orange beaks - Mollymawks. He simply watches for a while, staring up above at the crystal blue sky unable to move from the ground he lay on as they soar flying overhead. He watches until it all goes bright, until the light consumes him.

He remembers nothing but flashes of bright white... it flows through him and takes over everything he is and has once been until he awakes again somewhere just as strange as before, not knowing how he got there nor why. But it’s all distant and cloudy - a mess of images and senses he can’t bring himself to understand. It's as if he’s watching through the eyes of someone else, like what he’s seeing is a memory that is not his own. 

He awakes next walking. White light and foreign voices seep down into him and he’s staggering up a road, bloodied and beaten with uneven and uncoordinated steps. He keeps walking through the pain. He has no control, he has nothing. 

Empty.  
Empty...

“There’s someone over there!”

He’s found by a travelling circus of all people, and the lavender purple tiefling with cuts and bruises covered all over his body is taken into their care. He’s alive, though hardly. Staggering up the road he’s unresponsive to their presence and voices, moving only due to instinct as they try to snap him out of what seems to be a catatonic and traumatized state. He is weak and his heart beats slow, but he’s mumbling, whispering words under his breath. And he can hear them, his own voice. It’s strange and at first he doesn’t believe it to even be his own, an audible faint accent over the layers of emotional pain that he feebly speaks with.

“Empty, Empty, Empty...” 

But it fades, and it’s all white yet again, brightness consuming him till his voice is nothing but a distant memory he can’t even remember. 

He remembers nothing more till days later, until he awakes in the dark room of a moving trailer covered under warm blankets and his body wrapped in bandages. He reaches to his head, curiously coming across that of curled horns he didn’t expect there to be and running his fingers along his slightly sharpened canines in confusion. However, he doesn’t remember the trailer stop moving, and nor does he remember the door of it sliding open to show the figure of an elven man with a lit lantern examining the room. But he sees and remembers the man in a hazy brightness of light and shrieks, flinching and drawing back into the shadows as a looming face stares out from the illuminated brightness of the lantern’s dim flare. He's pale with long greasy brown hair that curls at the ends, face slim and pointed with ears that are sharp and eyes that shine green. The man all but flinches too, stepping back hesitantly on instinct from the sudden panic of a terrified tiefling. 

“Hey, it’s okay.” He reassured, putting out his gloved hands in front of him to try and calm the tiefling down who was scattering backwards in freight, trying to pull himself away.

The ashy brown haired elf bent down on his knees, bringing himself to the tieflings height with a warm half smile on his face, “I’m not going to hurt you, yeah?”

His squirming and panic faded slowly with the calming tone of the mans voice which made it clear that he was not meaning to be threatening, and as the tiefling calmed himself enough to stay still he now simply stared, gingerly eyeing the strangely dressed man up and down.

“Hello there.” He grinned politely, tipping his oversized hat to greet his presence in a more welcoming manor.

Hello? The tiefling repeated the word to himself quietly in his jumbled thoughts. The word felt familiar, welcoming. 

“My name is Gustav.” He says with a quiet kindness to his voice, “We found you alone just outside the outskirts of the woods roughly 5 days ago, while we were travelling uptown to preform. We’ve healed you to the best of our ability but you were extremely injured when we found you and very much completely out of it. It seems that you are feeling better now though, yes?”

The tiefling stared. Eyes unblinking and wide he glared at the elvish man with wonder and confusion as the quiet words he spoke echoed through him like a humming tune. He was so very calm, and compared to the chaos of the tiefling’s own mind and the blinding dissociation of unfamiliar sights and sounds unfolding around him the calming voice that spoke was invitingly relaxing. 

“Do you have a name?” He asks after awhile of drawn out silence.

Gustav continued to stare back awaiting for a response with an eyebrow raised, before taking a long sigh.

“Do you understand me? Can you talk?” He questions.

The lavender tiefling frowned, looking down at his hands that were covered in scars and strange markings he hadn’t hardly even noticed before.

Yes, he wished to say; what his mind yelled angrily for him to reply with. But he didn’t. Instead he continued to stare, eyes hard and focused as he watched and examined the man in front of him with his shallow red eyes curiously. He shook his head slowly, not breaking eye contact. 

“No worries,” Gustav smiled, “We have plenty of quiet folk here, you will fit right in!” 

And he looks behind him at a young dwarven girl standing just outside of the door, peering in looking intrigued by the sight in front of her before noticing she had been spotted and quickly pulling her head away to vanish out of view. Gustav chuckles.

“Here, have this.” He smiles kindly yet again, putting down his lantern on the floor next to him before reaching to a deep purple coloured coat hung over his shoulder that he had prepared to give to the tiefling. He hands it over slowly, and the tiefling reaches out cautious, though interested nonetheless.

“You’re shivering, and it’s only going to get colder as winter draws near.” Gustav states as he watches the young clueless boy run his fingers along the ostentatious designs of the coat and examine the piece of clothing with fascination. 

“Plus,” he grins widely, “If you’re going to stay here for now you may as well dress the part. I believe this coat matches your very unmistakable and colourful looks extremely well!”

 

Days turn to weeks and he holds the coat close to him and refuses to take it off and let it out of his grasp, wrapping his arms around his chest and gripping onto the coat tightly for comfort when he believes no one is around, as if if he were to let go he would loose it and never get it back. 

“This is who I am.” He tells himself, mumbling the words over and over again in his head in hopes he could drown out the horrifying emptiness.

Toya, the young girl who had once kept to herself and cried out for loss of her family found happiness and peace in the tiefling, the two broken beings clinging onto each other as the girl found her once silenced and shy voice by being his.

The curious tiefling continued to stare and watch... and Gustav continued to keep his eyes on him like a overprotective parent to a needy child - examining his every move and every action just over his shoulder and out the corner of his eye. The members of the circus had come to realize that the quiet lavender tiefling had grown to be rather inquisitive. Watching out upon them all as he fiddled with the cards they had handed him, staring for hours upon hours at everything around him with deep concentration as if he was trying to absorb it all in. However, sometimes his interested and childlike curiosity of everything around him faded with the same look of unresponsive sadness they had found him in. The tiefling fell to the brightness, blanking as the light took over his mind and everything became too unbearable, too bright. His face turned into an expression that was exhausted and empty, someone who had seen to much. 

Unresponsive they could do nothing but wait for him to return from his adventure to nowhere in the maze of his own thoughts. However, as time continued to pass these moments became few and in-between - the light of nothing keeping its distance as the tiefling stumbled about with the strange and wonderful people of the circus with a new found spark in his soul burning within him that had once been nothing but the cold and empty. Though, when the brightness threatened to pull him back after days of his feet stable on the ground with those who held him in their arms with kindness and love - he all but broke. The voices of people he couldn’t recognize or remember echoed through his head all at once, howling and ripping at his mind as he whimpered and chocked on tears at the deafening mayhem. 

He sat alone in the darkness yet again - another restless night where he found himself laying without sleep. At first he rested in quiet, the eerie silence making his thoughts tick and mind rattle before he sat up and took a shaky sigh. With the blankets his family had given to him wrapped around his shoulders hung over him like a barricade of protection he brought his legs to his chest, shaking shook and trembling with the gut wrenching feeling of complete nothing consuming him again. He gripped at his coat, taking the bright and silky patterned piece of clothing and holding it tightly in his arms as he fiddled with its seams and buttons to try to hold onto his sanity, to who he was. And he rocked, and rocked, back and fourth; crying through uneven breaths as he tried his best to ignore the voices and noises in his head. Whimpering and mumbling as he begged to not let it take him again. To not let it take him away from those he loved.

Empty.  
Empty.  
Empty.  
Empty...

And he didn’t notice the small dwarven girl Toya, standing at the opening of his tent with her tired dark eyes wide with sadness and worry as she looked over at his hunched and rocking body in the corner of the tent with his familiar looking distant expression. 

“Empty, Empty, Empty, Empty, Empty.” He murmured to no on in particular.

The light wind from outside blew through the tent, her blonde tied back hair blowing against the wind as she tucked it back behind her ears and out of her freckled face. Toya crept up slowly with cautious respect, approaching with carefulness in hopes not to frighten the whimpering tiefling - and as she approached him she knelt down to his level on the ground, tilting her head curiously as she listened to his meaningless mumbles that he hummed to himself while rocking. 

Empty...  
Empty...

He was nothing, nor no one.  
He was empty.

“It’s okay.” She told him with her cracked and weary voice, “You don’t have to be sad. We will look after you, you’re not alone.”

Alone, he repeated to himself. Alone.  
But he was, or was he? 

He had awoken in the darkness, raised and tortured by the light. He was alone as their prisoner and they had taken him away and left him as nothing but a broken shell with messed up thoughts and a body that wasn’t his own. But he had been saved, he told himself - rescued by caring misfits who were just as damaged as his very self. Indivuals who looked out for him and protected him even with all this flaws and his screwed up, empty mind. They loved him, cared for him... and maybe he wasn’t alone, he realized. Maybe he was going to be okay.

The tiefling looked up from his lap he had buried his head in, puffy red eyes focusing onto the young Toya as she smiled with a thoughtful, reassuring smile and stared with sympathetic eyes that were as lost and pained as his very own. 

He let out a sob, lunging out towards the girl to embrace her in a hug. And he cried, and cried - sobbing into her shoulder as he shook in her arms and she returned the embrace.

“It’s okay. You’re not alone, you have us.” 

“Y- Yeah,” He whispered, the words coarse and foreign as he spoke through croaked tears, “not alone...”


End file.
